Pebblepad

To ensure all staff could benefit from our 6th May TLE Seminar “What’s New in Learning Technology”, we recorded the sessions, which are now available on our YouTube channel, so if you want to know more about Flipped Classrooms, e-portfolios or Open Educational Practices in Scotland follow this link to the TLE Seminar YouTube Playlist .

Many thanks to our external speakers: Dr Pete Cannell and Dr Ronald Macintyre from OEPS, Dr Heather Smith from Cranfield University, Robert Chielewski from Institute of Academic Development Edinburgh University and Alastair Brooke and Nathan Cobb from Blackboard.

The University is starting at Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) working group that will include all stakeholders throughout the university, including senior management, academic teaching staff, administrative and support functions. The working group will be asked to consider the technology Abertay are currently using, what the sector trends are are what our future direction should be. This seminar will showcase some of the technologies the group will be asked to consider. Heads of Schools will be asking for volunteers for this group very soon.

We wil be inviting external speakers to talk about the Open Education Practices Scotland project, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Flipped Classroom, e-portfolios for personal development and employability.

Blackboard will also be attending via Webinar to update us on future directions for their virtual learning environment.

There will be a panel for Questions and Answers at the end of the seminar which we hope will spark ideas for the working group.

Pebblepad have recently launched the Pebble Pocket app. Designed for “reflection-on-the-go” that allows users to create posts, reflections and experiences as well as the ability to send images and videos. This is a really good app even though it doesn’t currently support templates or workbooks. Very handy for students creating assets whilst out on work placements or staff on the Abertay PGCert programme.

Configuring the App
After downloading the app there are several splash screens to swipe through before being prompted with Start using Pebble Pocket.

1. Go to Settings – Account Information – Login In, see fig 1.

Fig 1 – Pebble Pocket account settings

2. Tap Please choose institution. The University of Abertay Dundee is near the bottom of the list.
3. Tap Next Step.
4. Select I have an IT account at this organisation, and tap LogIn.
5. Accept the default Login with my Abertay University user id and password and tap Select.
6. Log in with your Abertay University user id and password.
7. Tap the Pebble+ button.
8. Next, you will see the screen The application Pebble Pocket has requested access to your Pebble account. It will be granted these permissions: Default permissions. Tap Allow, see fig 2.

Fig 2 – Accept default permissions

9. Your Pebblepad account information will be displayed.
10. Tap back then Done.

Getting started
Tapping on Create a post will present you with a title field and a content field, see fig 3. Basic formatting e.g. bold, italics, underline is available when text is selected. Once finished you can either tap on send if you have a wifi connection or save to device to sync later. This is a really nice feature and all saved assets will appear in the My Assets area on the Pebble Pocket dashboard.

Fig 2 – Creating an asset in Pebble Pocket

Best thing about this app:

Ability to save basic assets offline and sync later.

Things to know:
This app syncs one way only, it is not possible to send assets from your desktop Pebblepad account to Pebble Pocket. There is no support for templates or workbooks currently.